10 August 2012 ~ INTERNET + GOOGLE EARTH = MEMORY LANE

10 August 2012 ~ INTERNET + GOOGLE EARTH = MEMORY LANE

I still play vinyl.  I still own a Walkman.  But my Kodak film camera, with attaching cube flashbulbs, has long since bit the dust.  I remember my first calculator, VCR, CD player, etc.  All that aside; there is nothing quite as wondrous as the World Wide Web.  For the past hour, whilst enjoying a fine glass (or three) of wine, I have been travelling the earth visiting all of the houses I have lived in as man and boy; quite remarkable!  It really is a virtual trip down memory lane.

Years ago, when visiting England for the first time in ages, I had my lovely bride, Jane, run the 8mm camcorder (no view screens back then) for ages whilst I drove the rental car through the streets of Liverpool where I first kicked a ball as a lad.  I realise now what a right royal pain in the arse I must have been.  But at the time it was important to me.  I wasn’t sure when I would ever be back in this old stomping ground of my younger youth.  There have been many times, usually late at night and before the internet, that I would pop in the tape and take that drive down memory lane.  Homesick?  Perhaps.  The fact is that I have moved around the planet that much, I catch myself asking what I could, or should, call home any more.  But it doesn’t take me long to realise that home, my roots that is, will always be Garston, Liverpool 19. 

Today, and for the past twenty-four years, my home has been Canada.  This is where Jane and I moved to when I came out of the Royal Air Force.  Initially I missed the pubs and the football.  Today there are a lot of ‘English’ bars where you can whet your whistle and I can watch all the footy I want on TV.  I can read my old favourite newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, but I refuse to pay for the opportunity to fail at their crossword; I couldn’t finish it even when I lived in England. 

With Facebook I can have brief chats, share photos and generally mix and mingle with friends of old as well as new.  Up until this moment I have taken all of this for granted.  Not anymore.  I mean, I can pretty much do it all on my laptop.  What an age we live in compared to the Walkman!  The fact that I can carry around with me about two weeks’ worth of music in my shirt pocket and not require the services of a wheelbarrow in the process is amazing!  So at home, I do still play my vinyl, but the digital portability for my iTunes astounds even me.

Ugh!  I can’t believe the colour the garage door has been painted on the first house we bought back in England.  That has to be the worst green ever!  The front lawn still looks much the same; in need of cutting! 

Just took a jog along the sea front in Great Yarmouth.  The tower is still there.  I think it was called the Oasis Tower when we lived there.  Although I can notice quite a few changes, some things still look the way I remember through my child’s eye.  Uncanny that.

But my Liverpool has changed dramatically.  Change is necessary, I suppose, but I selfishly wish sometimes that I could just go back to how it all used to be.  I am not kidding myself here; I am well aware that the quality of life I lead now compared to then is by far much nicer.  But wouldn’t it be brilliant if you could press a key on your laptop and, just like Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas past, you could ‘beam’ yourself down to the times of scraped knees and jam butties and not knowing the difference between whether you were clean or dirty; you left that decision up to your mum! 

Here I am, out on the deck, and my teenage girls are inside watching the Olympics on the big screen high-def. TV with their laptops on their laps and their cellular phone by their sides.  All I needed (and had for that matter) was a football.  I got to watch Batman down the street at number 20 once a week because we didn’t even own a TV.  Yes, they were happy times, but so are these. 

I am thankful that I still have the memories in my own RAM in between my ears.  Bit of techno jargon there!  I know that you know what it means, because you are reading this on a computer.

How did our parents manage without slow cookers, microwaves, washing machines and dryers, dishwashers and so on?  I don’t recall my mum owning a vacuum cleaner until I was about twelve. We were a family of four with no car and coped quite easily getting groceries once a week without making it the huge logistics exercise that it’s become today.  And that was without stores being open on a Sunday!

Recently I was in Germany on business, it was May I think.  I was in my hotel room having a face-to-face conversation on Skype with my family back in Canada.  They were telling me that they had been in the garden all day planting flowers.  I said I can`t wait to see them when I get back home in a couple of days, but my techno-savvy daughters just picked up their laptop and showed me around the garden!  Brilliant!

There is no doubt that technology has come a long way since the first thermos-flask.  Despite all of these great inventions, my favourite still has to be the digital clock-radio; not because you don`t have to wake up to the sound of a pseudo fire alarm bell, but because of the brilliant Snooze Button!

Good-Night…